by Renee Duke
The next day brought additional duties. Kirsty was asked to work at the information desk, Jip in a boutique, Simon the computer room, and me the playroom. The four hours I put in there were not as bad as my stint at Teeny Weeny House, however. The lady in charge of the place demanded, and got, civilized behaviour, even from the Sustran children in her care.
Our regular work had to be got through as well, so we were all ready for bed by the time we headed down to the service crew’s quarters with some other off-duty attendants. A Sustran girl bustled ahead to open the door to the female dormitory and was standing in front of it emitting frightened squeals when we arrived. Looking inside, I saw the place had been ransacked, with blankets and pillows torn off beds, drawers pulled out of cabinets, luggage broken into, and clothing and other personal belongings scattered everywhere.
“This is outrageous,” the Sustran girl said after Simon came running back to report that the men’s dormitory had been similarly dealt with. “I’m going to get the personnel director.” She hurried off, the others attendants with her.
I closed the door behind them. “Someone on board must be looking for the Ring of Beom. It can’t be the Ralgonian, though. We’d have noticed him.”
“Would we?” said Jip. “It is a big ship, and we have been very busy. He could have boarded without our knowing. The Sustran authorities might not have kept him long.”
“If they didn’t, he could have picked up our trail and shipped out with us,” Simon put in. “The man in the computer room wants me to help him again tomorrow. I’ll go through the passenger list and see if there are any Ralgonians aboard.”
He found three, all female. When Jip peeked in to see how he was doing, she suggested he request passport pictures of all the middle-aged men on the ship. He did so, but there were none that resembled our mysterious follower.
After lunch, we were all told to return to our cabin duties, which made us a bit uneasy as the person summoning one of us might be the same person who’d searched our dormitories and now knew we kept the ring with us. Every time a buzzer sounded, we responded with extreme caution but, fortunately, the people in the cabins assigned to us only wanted routine services, not sacred rings. The next day, the ship went into orbit around Klavor, and we were too busy helping passengers disembark to think of anything else.
Simon and I were an hour late going for lunch. Before we could get to the crew’s dining room, someone hailed us to say we were wanted down in the cargo hold.
“What do they want us down there for?” demanded Simon, aggrieved. “All the Klavor passengers’ heavy luggage was taken down to the planet ages ago. The luggage for passengers getting on here can’t possibly be coming up yet.”
It was not our place to argue, however. We reported to the cargo hold as directed, but no one met us at the turbolift, and we had no idea where to go.
In addition to luggage and a small amount of freight, the cargo hold contained storage lockers for equipment not in constant demand on the upper decks. As we wandered amongst these looking for someone to tell us what to do, two figures suddenly leapt out and seized us from behind.
“It’s Nathan and Leopold,” Simon cried, trying to twist away.
He was no match for the one he later identified as Nathan. The lout threw my little brother down and pinned him to the deck with one arm. He then used his free hand to rifle through Simon’s belt, the logical carrying place for the item he sought.
“All we want is the ring,” the second lout, Leopold, growled, pushing me up against a locker with painful force. “Give it to us, and nothing will happen to you.”
In reply, I stamped on his foot and began to kick, bite, scratch, and otherwise hinder his attempts to get at my belt.
Since Nathan and Leopold had no way of knowing which of us was carrying the ring, they probably meant to accost each of us in turn. It was just their bad luck that their false order to report to the cargo hold was relayed to Kirsty and Jip before they thought it would be. Our friends arrived on the cargo deck only minutes after we did. Seeing us in trouble, they rushed to engage the enemy.
Kirsty got to us first. Calling forth the spirits of her ancestors with a bloodcurdling, “Up, the MacGregors!” she snatched a big metal clamp off a nearby rack and brought it down on Leopold’s head. His grip on me slackened instantly, and he slid to the deck, pulling me with him.
Wriggling loose, I saw Jip closing in on Nathan swinging one of her boots, which she had somehow yanked off as she ran. He muttered a few curses and jumped up to meet her, thus freeing Simon. As she battered him with the boot, Simon scrambled to his feet and took a quick look around. The filing panel on one of the lockers behind him was flashing Empty. He hit a button on it and dropped down in a crouching position. This age-old schoolboy trick must have been known on Vorla too, because Jip picked up on it right away. She gave Nathan a violent shove that toppled him over Simon and into the storage locker.
Jumping forward, I slammed the door on him and flicked the mechanism into the lock position before turning my attention to Leopold. He had only partially succumbed to Kirsty’s blow, and was trying to stagger to his feet. He was still groggy though, so we had no trouble steering him into another locker and imprisoning him as we had Nathan.
My thoughts in a whirl, I leaned against the lockers to catch my breath.
“Will they be all right in there?” Jip asked, considerate, even of the likes of Nathan and Leopold.
“Lockers like this have built-in oxygen supplies to sustain anyone careless enough to get shut in them,” Simon told her. “They’ve got distress signals too. I’ve managed to jam those for now, but once the override kicks in, someone will come to rescue them.”
“Which means they’ll be after us again in pretty short order.” I frowned. “I suppose we could tell someone what happened and lay assault charges against them, but if we do, it could trigger some awkward questions.”
“No could aboot it. It would, and we canna risk that,” said Kirsty. “We’ll have to get off the ship. You three fetch the luggage whilst I see aboot changing oor money and getting us on a transit barge going doon to Klavor.”
The personnel director wasn’t pleased to hear we were getting off at Klavor. Aside from the fact we were deserting our posts, the planet had an unsavoury reputation. According to Kirsty, the woman didn’t think it a suitable place for young people to visit. Kirsty told her we’d be careful, and spun her a story about our being so taken with a Klavorian passenger’s tales of the Illuminated Swamps that we’d been seized with an uncontrollable desire to see them for ourselves. Still dubious, the personnel director gave her passes for a transit barge and told her to make sure we all handed in our uniforms.
In next to no time we were down on Klavor standing in a line of people waiting to clear customs. It didn’t take long. Klavor was well known for its lack of concern about what people brought onto it. It didn’t much care what they took off it either.
We then went to make inquiries about other starliners going to Cholar. At that point, we were even willing to stow away on one, but the only ship heading out anytime soon was the one we had just got off. To get a different one, we would have to come back the next day.
“Now what?” I asked the others as I turned away from the information booth. “We’ve no money for a hotel. And we sure can’t stay here all night. Nathan and Leopold could come down on the next transit barge.” I thought for a minute. “I think there’s a youth hostel in the Klavorian capital. Maybe we could work off a night’s lodging there.”
Kirsty shrugged. “It’s worth a try. Have we the money for a taxi?”
“Depends how much they are here,” Simon replied. “A bus might be better.”
We picked up our luggage and went out to the front of the starport. Extortionately priced air transport vehicles swooped alongside a platform high above us. Ignoring them, we joined the throng of economy minded travellers vying for the attention of ground-transport vehicles. The ground buses were all
full, but a taxi driver saw us standing by the bus stop looking forlorn and brought his ground car right up to us. Jumping out onto the curb, he shouted for us to get in. He gathered our luggage up under both arms and had it all loaded by the time we’d counted our money to see if we had enough for the fare.
“That’ll do,” he said in the sharp, impatient voice I was beginning to realize was almost as characteristic of Klavorians as their bright red skin, shrewd yellow eyes, and the jagged black markings down the right-hand sides of their faces.
Relieved to have found affordable transportation, we got in the taxi. The driver jumped in too and roared out of the starport so fast I wondered if he had ever plied his trade on Sustra.
So did Kirsty. She was all for asking him, but we had no way of getting his attention. The taxi didn’t have an audio communicator, and a solid metal panel behind the driver cut us off from his view.
“Och, well, there’s a lot of riffraff on Klavor,” said Kirsty. “The panel’s probably there to discourage hold-ups.”
“That could be the reason,” said Jip.
Hearing a touch of concern in her voice, I began to feel a little uneasy myself.
“Can you think of another one?”
“I am not sure. I have no desire to alarm anyone but, is it not customary for a taxi driver to ascertain his passengers’ destination before setting off?”
Kirsty caught her breath sharply. Simon and I exchanged looks of horror and reached for the cab doors.
Even before we tried them, I knew they would be locked.
Chapter Fourteen
We banged on the panel, shouted, and waved frantically out the side windows. None of the people in the ground cars we passed took any notice. Some even smiled and waved back, thinking we were only objecting to how fast our taxi was going. Nor did it slow down until the buildings on either side of the road had begun to give way to trees and grassland. As the traffic around us decreased, and the amount of foliage increased, I realized we were being taken into Klavor’s outer regions, an area even the most sophisticated agricultural techniques had failed to convert to arable land. The famous Illuminated Swamps were located somewhere in the outer regions, but so was the equally famous, or perhaps I should say, infamous, Smugglers’ Stronghold—a vast no man’s land of dangerous, almost impenetrable, terrain said to harbour smugglers, space pirates, escaped criminals, and other assorted villains. Mysterious atmospheric conditions there interfered with military and police tracking scanners so much that outlaws were seldom pursued past a certain point. It was even rumoured some marauders had permanent hideouts within Smugglers’ Stronghold and would, for a price, lease them to anyone seeking to store booty or conduct unsavoury business.
I thought it likely our captor was heading for one of these hideouts.
“He could also just be taking us oot into the bush a wee ways so he can murder us all,” Kirsty said gloomily.
“Only if he’s acting on his own initiative,” I replied. “He doesn’t strike me as someone who acts on his own initiative. He’s an underling. He follows orders.”
“Suppose taking us oot and murdering us were his orders?”
“He’d have carried them out by now. It’s my guess he’s just going to hand us over to the people he works for.”
“Aye, and then they’ll murder us.”
“Will you please stop saying that?” said Jip.
“Och, I’m only being realistic. You know full well they’re going to, sooner or later. We’ll be no use to them once they’ve got the ring. I’m surprised they haven’t had yon cabby knock us on the head and take it as it is.”
“They can’t be sure we’ve got it,” I said. “For all they know, we could have hidden it somewhere. There’s no way they’re going to do away with us until they’ve got the ring in their hot little hands.”
“And how long do you think that’s going to take? They’ll find it as soon as they search us.”
Jip’s brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “Not necessarily. It still could be hidden. And as long as they think we know where it is, we should be safe.”
“Hidden where?” Simon jeered. “This cab isn’t exactly full of hidey-holes. There’s no place to stash the thing.”
“Not on this plane, no. But Klavor, like all worlds, has other dimensions.”
“Aye, it does. And you could take the ring into one of them,” Kirsty responded excitedly. “That’s a grand idea. Then you could use that rapid transit dimension to go back to the capital and get help from the authorities.”
Jip shook her head. “If what I have heard about Klavor is true, the authorities will demand payment for any help they are asked to give, and I have nothing with which to pay them. Help would therefore not be forthcoming. And my Vorlan Code of Honour does not permit me to save myself and leave the rest of you in danger. As soon as I have moved the ring into another dimension, I shall return here, to the initial plane.”
By now I knew there was no point in trying to overcome the Vorlan Code of Honour. I extracted the ring from my belt and handed it to her. The rest of us watched as she sat with it clasped tightly between her hands in an attempt to quell the mental turbulence wrought by the events of the past few hours. Concentrating deeply, she leaned forward and disappeared. She materialized again a few minutes later and sank between Kirsty and Simon, her brow covered with perspiration. The ring was nowhere in sight as she brushed a hand across her flushed cheeks.
“This planet has some interesting…side dimensions,” she said.
“But the ring’s safe?” I inquired.
She nodded.
“Where is it, exactly?” asked Simon.
Jip thought for a moment. “Since you do not understand dimension travel, I cannot give you a precise answer. You could say it is where it was before.”
“You mean in my belt?” I snatched it off and peered into the now-empty side chamber. “How? I was wearing it. I didn’t feel you put anything in it.”
“You would not. You, and I, and the belt, and everything around us, share the space we occupy. The sensations of one plane do not apply to another, except, occasionally, in the inter-dimensional corridors between them. You felt nothing because, on this plane, I did nothing. Even if our captors look in the belt later on, they will find nothing of interest to them. On this plane, it contains nothing of interest to them.”
The taxi continued its journey into the outer regions. When it eventually stopped, we appeared to be in the middle of nowhere.
A vehicle was waiting for us. It was a large multi-seater air car designed to put down in rugged terrain. Two Klavorian men got out of it and came over to the taxi. One of them jerked the door open while the other motioned us to get out. He was holding what Simon said was definitely a liquidator, so we did not demur.
“I suppose this is as far as the taxi could bring us,” I murmured as the driver threw our luggage out on the ground.
“Shut up,” growled the man with the liquidator. He pushed us over to the air car and told us to strap ourselves into the seats. Keeping his weapon on us the whole time, he lowered himself into a seat behind us and secured his own straps. When the other man joined us, he tossed our luggage aboard, settled in behind the control panel, and jabbed a button. Minutes later, we were airborne.
It was a long trip. Since neither of the men said anything, and conversation between us had already been discouraged, it was also a quiet one.
Toward late afternoon the air car began to descend. Below us we could see a low rectangular building surrounded by dense underbrush. A small air car stood in a clearing to the side of it. As we pulled up alongside it, I noticed it had diplomatic decals and wondered if it had been stolen or hi-jacked. The decals made it extremely valuable, as they permitted any vehicle to go anywhere, on any world, without being challenged.
We were taken inside through a door in the back of the building. The bright lights in the room they shoved us into were in sharp contrast to the dimness of the passage without. Adjusting m
y eyes to the brilliance of our new surroundings, I saw a thin middle-aged Cholarian man with a wispy moustache and goatee-style beard standing behind a metal table with four affixed seats. The only other piece of furniture was a sideboard running along the length of the far wall. It held an audio-communication unit with some special device for filtering through the atmospheric interference in the area.
The man wore a meticulously cut travel suit with matching top-gown. He watched our entry with hard, unyielding eyes. As soon as we were far enough into the room for us to be standing opposite him, he waved the guards away.
He continued to study us as they withdrew to the door. Then he spoke, his voice polite, but intimidating. “My name is Drazok. Crown Councilman Drazok, of the Cholarian Supreme Council. I am—”
“—the one Prince Mardis gets to do all his dirty work for him,” Kirsty finished.
Drazok’s eyes narrowed. “His Highness does not compel my service. I give it quite freely. To place him on the throne of Cholar is my greatest desire. It is desire I intend to fulfil. Support for his claim to the rulership has already risen dramatically. But, like the soon-to-be-deposed Prince Taziol, Prince Mardis cannot be crowned without the sacred Ring of Beom. I understand you have inadvertently been burdened with this object. Perhaps you would be so good as to give it to me?” He stretched out his hand expectantly.
“What makes you think we have your planet’s sacred ring?” I asked.
“You must have us confused with someone else,” Kirsty told him. “We’re naught but innocent young travellers oot to—”
“I know exactly who you are and what you have set out to do,” Drazok said coldly. “You cannot sway me with protestations of innocence. Give me the ring.” When this second request brought him nothing but blank stares, he withdrew his hand and beckoned to his henchmen. “Very well. You oblige me to have it taken from you. Search them.”
One of the Klavorians collected our belts and travel bags and looked through them carefully. The other ran a scanning device up and down each of us.
